11:50 We have been in Bohol, Anda for two weeks now – and what a joy it has been. I think it has a lot to do with just taking it easy and embracing local culture. People and places here have so much to offer, that you could never experience everything, at least with few weeks or months or possibly even with a lifetime.
Veronica mentioned people living in poor conditions earlier – It is true, that most of people are forced to live in near unacceptable conditions and in the other hand, few live in the most modern villas that you can imagine. The poorest people cannot afford education for their children – at the same time the wealthiest live more and less like „kings“.
Few locals told me about great amount of corruption in government level – people who have access to money are willing to „steal“ it from the poor one (unfortunately it is like that everywhere – more or less). I really don’t want to get caught up by this political mess, but I’m willing to point out, that there is a large problem present.
Though most of people live poorly in the material sense, they’re wealthy internally – They are very happy, generous and helpful. I really love all our neighbours – one of them is over 80 years old lady, who always salutes me with a smile and friendly „hello Thomas“ :). When I was looking to buy some local eggs she apologized modestly, that they only have two chickens for the whole large family and not too many eggs – but later on still brought me few of her eggs for absolutely nothing – thank you.
Ofcourse you have to love the small corner kiosk (they call it shop here) ladies, who have somewhat crazy humour, but always helpful and willing to teach you some new phrases or words from local language. Salamat – meaning thank you (probably awfully wrong spelling).
First few days here were extremely fast – beside trying to settle in and get over our jetlag, we had to set up everything needed for living here some time. I’m glad to say, that everything worked out nicely.
We got ourselves small two roomed apartment (half of house) near the beach and not too far away from city center, with everything you need for living (even the ac and satellite tv, that we really don’t use) and a motorcycle to move around.
Take your time looking for place to stay and motorcycle to rent, because a lot of beach side or more touristy places tend to be expensive and same applies to renting a bike. You can get a bargain deal if you have few days to look around. Also it is usually cheaper to rent manual gearbox bike, because lot of tourist look for automatics as they don’t know how to use manual – I learned it with few hours luckily.
Most of people say that Philippines food tastes like ****. Maybe I’m not so picky, but I don’t mind the food here, it is mostly eatable. And of course the fresh, chemical free local vegetables and fruits taste nothing like the ones in Estonia – buy and eat them as much as possible, as they taste good and give you a lot of vitamins.
Food on our market diners is versatile and you can get your tummy full from 40-120 peso, depending on your taste and size of appetite. I would suggest eating out in local diners or markets, as the food there is 2-4 times cheaper than in restaurant targeted for tourist and some times might even have better tasting food.
For example pancakes in restaurant a) cost 145 peso, restaurant/bar b) 120peso and on market 40peso and tasting as good as in restaurants 🙂 And I absolutely love my new singing, instrument playing, cooking and so on multi talented friends from market. Sorry for not yet remembering your names, but you know how to enjoy life, without worrying too much over the things that are not important.
Shops around here do offer just the bare minimum you might need and some of the stuff you might be used to take as granted, is not available here. We are getting used to it and we aren’t very demanding, so we get almost everything locally, but still need to travel to bigger cities for some certain items. Some of the more specific things here are much more expensive than in larger cityes. For example sunblock cost locally 345peso and about 100peso less in Tagbilaran. So you might wan’t to get specific or luxury items from somewhere else.
You cannot find yourself shoes of flip-flops here if you have big feet 🙂 I have 45-46 (Europe) that should be about 11 in here. Most of the 11 are too small and in many places they don’t have this size footwear at all. So after 2 weeks of looking I found myself some flip-flops from Tagbilaran mall.
The same applies for clothes, that usually are meant for way smaller sized people.
Jumping from one topic to another I would now like to come back to the beauty of nature here. First week we hade time to discover some of the most beautiful places on the island, that are hidden from eye of most tourist and travellers.
On saturday the 20’th we took a trip to the largest cave in Bohol (Eskaya Caves, Guindulman). It is about an hour ride into the midland mountains through some bad roads, with epic views. Tak it easy when riding there, it is accident to happen on every corner, as the road is very poor on some occasions.
You could go there by yourself but it is not recommended (very off the grid location). Trip from local village takes about 1.5-2 hours hike through mountains and jungle into to cave. Having a local guide on your road is advised, as they know the road and also look out for any potentially dangerous creatures (example snakes) on the road.
We haven’t seen any snakes yet, but heard stories of large snakes eating whole dogs. For a person who likes hiking in wildlife, this is a great small one day trip. It had been raining for the day before our trip so the jungle floor was very muddy and slippery, our trip took longer than we expected – but the better was the arrival to the huge cave.
You can travel into the end of the cave, where you might have a swim but it is pretty dangerous at the moment. Is is not tourist attraction and not whole lot of people go there, so there is no ladder to get up and down from the stream. You have to switch off all your flashlights at the end, to experience complete darkness. Of course on the way you look out for hand sized spiders, thousands of bats and a lot of slippery bat poop on the floors 🙂
Yes, we got pretty dirty there. Thank you James and others, for this nice trip to wilderness. Oh and yes, on the way home we had great swim in some abandoned cliff side bar – you have to climb down some sketchy, almost collapsing stairway, but the views are super and water is always warm.
Next day beside taking it easy, relaxing in the beach (I haven’t really sunbathed yet, but you don’t really need to, if you move around in the sun alot) we wen’t for as swim in Cabagnow Cave. It’s located in Anda region, not too far from our home.
You need a local ladder guy (or possibly home made climbing rope) to get out the the cave after swim, as it is high edged and pretty deep (4-6 meters, depending on the tide).
This is one of the must do things in Anda, swimming in one of these caves! There are a lot of them here and some smaller ones you can g et in and out by yourself – unfortunately some of them also full of trash and nobody cleans them.
There is so much more to share and talk, but I leave something for the next time. And I probably forgot a lot of great stories to write – forgive for my short memory 🙂
Will be continued…
